by A. J. Oates
Walking through the front door, the house felt cold and the air damp even though I’d left the central heating on its normal cycle. I gathered together the post that had accumulated on the doormat and sat at the bottom of the stairs, separating out the fast-food fliers and miscellaneous other junk mail. I placed the remainder, a couple of bank and credit card statements, an electricity and telephone bill, on the hallway telephone table, and headed through to the kitchen to put the shopping away. About to throw the junk mail in the bin, I caught sight of a small manila envelope sticking out from the edge of the pile. The dog-eared envelope had been recycled by the sender and it had a typed address on the front which had been scribbled out. Above it, and hand-written in black ink (although the writer was clearly having problems with the pen, as the first two letters were almost carved into the paper): “JULIAN”. I didn’t recognise the writing, and at first suspected that it might be one of the many letters of sympathy I’d received, often from complete strangers having read about the hit-and-run in the paper.
I opened the envelope, removed the letter, and with the ink now flowing more reliably, I immediately scanned to the bottom to identify the signature. After initially struggling to decipher the scrawled lettering, I had the sudden sinking, realisation: “Mousey”, Musgrove’s nickname from school. I felt a tightening in my chest, and my hands began to tremble as I read the letter.
Dear my old mate Julian,
It was great for us to have that nice little chat in the boozer last night. It’s a real shame that you couldn’t stay any longer because there was so much to talk about. Anyway, Bozzy gave me your address and now I know where you live I can pop over all the time.
Like I said last night I’m a bit strapped for cash with me being out of work and everything and I know you’ll want to help me out. I’m sure you remember the original deal was for £5,000 to take care of you pretty wife. I didn’t mean to hurt your kids but you should be grateful, now you’ve got nothing to hold you back and you can do whatever you like with all that inheritance money. I’m an honest man I’ve already had £300 from your account, if my maths is right that just leaves £4,700. If that’s a problem I can always have a little chat with our friendly detective DI Patel.
Anyway I’ll give you a couple of days to get the money and I’ll come by on Thursday afternoon to pick-up it up.
Best wishes,
Your friend, Mousey
I reread the letter. I felt sick with fear and rage in equal measure, and ripped it into tiny fragments, as if trying to obtain some therapy by the act. I struggled to grasp that the creature that had killed my family was now trying to blackmail me; it was the final horrific insult. I’d hoped, perhaps fancifully, that his words from the previous night were merely the beer talking, but to see his threat in black and white felt far more real and threatening.
For the next few hours I sat at the kitchen table contemplating my next move. Numerous questions occupied my thoughts: Should I ignore him? Would he really go to the police knowing that he’d also face certain jail time? If I gave into his demands would it just be the start of the blackmail? I wasn’t bothered about the money. £4,700 – it was nothing to me and if anything it made me angry that he thought they were worth so little, but where would it end? The more I deliberated, the more confusing the picture seemed. Musgrove was an unpredictable junkie, how could I possibly anticipate his next move? Should I pre-empt his actions, go to the police and explain that he’d twisted my words? It would be my word against his. Would the police, or a judge and jury for that matter, believe a mindless junkie over me? I doubted they would, but did I really want to put myself through the uncertainties of such an ordeal? My head began to spin just thinking through the permutations.
I got to my feet with my back aching and stiff from sitting on the hard-backed chair for so long. I filled the kettle to make tea and then finally got round to taking my shoes and jacket off. As I waited for the water to boil I moved through to the living room, my thoughts still fixed on Musgrove. Amidst all the uncertainties I knew one thing for sure: although I’d lost my family and much of my life was in disarray, I still had far, far more to lose than him. There was no way I was going to prison and have my life further torn apart by the actions of a mindless junkie. The more I pictured Musgrove’s disgusting features, the greater the anger and frustration that built inside me, and I had the sudden realisation that I was no longer simply interested in self-preservation and avoiding a prison sentence. I wanted more. I wanted revenge. To wipe the smug grin from his face, permanently. Musgrove had taken everything from me and now I was going to make him pay.
----
On the edge of Kinder Scout, the thick, all-encompassing fog has started to lift by the time I’ve finished my story. Other than the faint sounds of the far-off crying birds, all is quiet as Stead takes everything in. Eventually, desperate for some sort of response, I break the silence. “What are you going to do now? … Are you going to go to the police?”
“I don’t know ... I don’t know. I just want to go home,” he responds. He slowly gets to his feet, turns his back on me, and begins the walk back towards Crookstone Hill. I shout after him, urging him, almost pleading with him for an answer: “Are you going to go to the police?”
He doesn’t respond.
Within five minutes I’m back in the bolt-hole, and safely ensconced in the thick stone walls I’m hit by the enormity of what’s happened. My earlier control dissipates and my body begins to shake. I crawl into the sleeping bag, and for the next few hours I lie curled in a ball trying to work out what to do. All the time I wait for some sign of imminent discovery: the faint hum of a helicopter, or the sound of a police tracker dog sniffing at the rocks at the entrance of the bolt-hole. But all remains quiet.
Early evening I get out of the sleeping bag and switch on the radio for the first time in several weeks. I scan through the regional stations until I find a news broadcast and listen intently, but there is no mention of any sighting of the fugitive, and I return to the warm sleeping bag.
As the minutes pass into the late evening and then through the night, I begin to feel a sense of reassurance. Of course I can’t be sure what Stead will do, given that he’s an ex-copper and presumably spent his career upholding the law. But towards the end of our exchange I began to feel that we’d established a glimmer of a connection, an unspoken understanding that, I can only hope, will be enough to save me.
Chapter 16
Early spring on Kinder Scout and now just a month before it is time for me to move on. After the trauma of the David Stead incident, my life has settled onto more of an even keel. For days I rarely left the Kinder Scout bolt-hole as I awaited discovery, but slowly my confidence returned and now, six weeks on, I’ve re-established my routine of the two ventures to the outside world, the first at 6:00 a.m. and then late afternoon when the walkers have disappeared and I have the moors to myself again. Life follows the predictable pattern of sleep, food, and these two, all too brief, escapes to the outside world. Perhaps some would struggle with the monotony of the regime, but for me, after all the emotional upheaval, it comes as a welcome relief.
Even the bolt-hole is becoming a home of sorts. In the darkness of my hideaway I switch on the torch and view the imposing walls of my home of the last few months. After spending much of my time counting down the days and willing the time to pass, now for the first time I begin to suspect that I might actually miss the place. It has provided me with the time and, ironically, the space to rebuild my life. I can also reflect on the fact that perhaps I’ve redressed some sort of karmic balance. Yes, I deliberately took a life, Musgrove’s life. But I’ve also saved a life, David Stead’s life, when in many ways it would have been so much easier to let him fall to his death. For so long I’ve been plagued with guilt over the deaths of Helen and the boys, and even that of Musgrove, knowing that nobody has the right to take away another’s life. But now increasingly I know that I’m not a monster, and it’s almost as if, with
this realisation, my memories of the plan to kill Musgrove have been unlocked from my deep consciousness and I can assess them in an objective way when my thoughts return to a few months earlier.
For some long-forgotten reason, I always used green ink when writing drafts of research papers or grant proposals, and it seemed appropriate to do the same as I began to jot down the elements of my plan for Musgrove’s timely demise. I spent most of the morning working on an outline, and by lunch time much of the first page was covered in green ink, with various key words linked together by arrows. After only a couple of hours, I could feel the fog that had surrounded my thinking beginning to lift. After weeks of uncertainty and drifting, I finally had a focus and the extremely satisfying sense that the hunter, Musgrove, was becoming the hunted.
To anyone reading my scribbled notes they would doubtless have made little sense, but as I began to review my plan it was perfectly clear. The first step was to pay Musgrove. Instinctively the notion of seeming to give way to his sick attempt at blackmail was totally abhorrent. But I knew, if nothing else, it would provide time to put the other elements of the plan in place. I phoned the bank, and after spending several minutes negotiating the complex computerised answering system I finally got through to a surly male operator. My request for a £4,700 cash withdrawal was initially treated with some disinterest, but after he checked the account details, and presumably the balance, now burgeoning following the receipt of my parents’ inheritance and from the sale of their house, his approach changed dramatically. “Yes, sir, I’ll arrange for your money to be available to you at your local branch by noon tomorrow, and by the way, sir, you seem to have a large sum of money in your current account, can I arrange a financial health check for you?” I declined the invitation and replaced the phone.
I returned my attention to the pad in front of me. To kill Musgrove and more importantly get away with it, I needed to build up a detailed picture of his routine, to determine the optimal timing and the location of the ultimate act. Of course I knew where his flat was, and I needed to find a suitable vantage point from which to keep track of his movements. Abruptly interrupting my racing thoughts, my mobile began vibrating on the kitchen table. I glanced at the small screen displaying “unknown” and then answered. The voice was more slurred and disjointed than usual but I recognised it as Musgrove’s. My instinct was to hang up, but taking several deep breaths I composed myself and remembered the old expression, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. After several seconds of silence I answered aggressively, feigning annoyance and not having to try too hard. “What the hell do you want?”
“Now, now, Julian, is that anyway to talk to an old friend?” Musgrove was clearly under the influence of some drug or other, presumably at my financial expense, and I didn’t answer. After a few seconds he continued: “I’m just checking that you received my little note and that everything will be okay for Thursday.”
I responded forcefully, almost spitting into the phone. “Let me make this perfectly clear to you ... this is the one and only time that I’m ever going to give you anything ... you’d better understand that.”
Pleased with my theatrical performance, I switched off the phone without giving him a chance to answer. I sat back in the uncomfortable kitchen chair with the bars sticking into my back and reflected on the phone call. Perhaps surprisingly, I wasn’t unduly perturbed by the conversation; if anything it had only served to galvanise my commitment. I knew my plan had to work.
I refocused on the job at hand, and taking the stairs two at a time I headed up to the study. I switched on the laptop and while it powered up I found the A-Z map on the shelf above the desk. I flicked through to the pages covering Rawlton as I struggled to remember the name of Musgrove’s road. Amidst the drunken haze of a few weeks earlier I could picture a roundabout at one end and an old church at the other, but studying the maze of streets on the map, it could have been anywhere. As I attempted to recall any other landmarks, I remembered the envelope containing Musgrove’s letter. I retrieved it from the kitchen table, ran back upstairs, and then held it up to the window. With the sunlight penetrating the previously scribbled-out address, the first three lines were clearly visible:
Mr T. Musgrove
29a Stanley Road
Rawlton
The remainder of the address was still obscured but it was enough, and returning to my lap top I did a Google search with the keywords “Rawlton”, “rental”, “flat” and “letting agents.” In total nine hits were retrieved, all corresponding to local letting agents in the Rawlton area. Each website has a search facility for their listings and I selected “Stanley Road” for the address, “any” for the accommodation type, price range and whether furnished or unfurnished. I was far from fussy and certainly not looking for five-star accommodation; anything with a view of Musgrove’s flat would suffice. I spent the next hour or so trawling the listings of each agency, finding a total of eight properties on Stanley Road. I printed off the list and then grabbed my jacket, keys and the A-Z before heading to the car.
Within twenty minutes I arrived at Stanley Road. A knot immediately formed in the pit of my stomach and my palms became damp with sweat as I drove past Musgrove’s flat, the site where effectively a death sentence for my family had been conceived. Desperately trying to calm and control my emotions, I drove to the end of the road, turned the car round in a quiet side street and removed the list of flats from my jacket pocket. Propping the list against the steering wheel, I slowly drove back down the road trying to identify the house numbers. Many of the properties were too far from 29a to provide a reasonable view and I immediately crossed off 111, 101b, 97a, 68 and 30a, leaving just two candidate flats, 17b and 10a. I drove on further to reach 10a, which was close to the end of the street. But again I eliminated it, as it was set too far back from the road and didn’t give an unobstructed view of 29a.
This left just 17b, a first-floor flat, according to my list. Knowing that I must have already driven past it, I turned the car round and slowed to a crawl. I passed 13, 15 and then a building with a washing machine in the front garden but no obvious number, after which came 19 and 21. I stopped the car, turned off the engine and peered down the driveway beyond the overgrown hedge. About to drive on further, at the last second I spotted the number 17 painted on a gatepost that had fallen into the overgrown front yard. I jumped out of the car as my heart began to thud uncomfortably. I was now directly opposite Musgrove’s flat, and I headed down the driveway of number 17. The first door I came to had 17b scrawled in whitewash across the lower pane of glass. I couldn’t believe my luck, a first floor flat directly opposite 29a: the perfect vantage point.
I tried to obscure my face as I went back to the car, praying that Musgrove wouldn’t happen to be looking out of his living room window. I started the engine and drove for a few minutes with my heart still thumping, before parking up a couple of miles away. I searched through the paperwork for the number of the letting agent and dialled it on my mobile. With the phone ringing I suddenly realised that I was using a phone registered in my own name; it could easily be traced back to me. Why hadn’t I used a public phone box? I cursed my stupidity – I had to start thinking like a criminal. Too late to hang up, on the fourth ring a male voice answered: “Smith and Dobson letting agents.”
“Yes, I’ve seen a property on your website, 17b Stanley Road. I want to check that it’s still available.”
I could hear him tapping away at his keyboard. “I’ll just have a look on our system for you … Yes, it’s still available. 17b Stanley Road, a one-bedroom, unfurnished, first-floor flat, available immediately, £200 monthly rent and £200 deposit.”
“Great, I’ll take it,” I said. “When can I collect the keys?”
The agent appeared surprised: presumably they didn’t get many enthusiastic tenants for a flat in such an undesirable area of town. “Don’t you want to view the property first?”
“No, no, I’m sure it will be fine. I’ve
seen it from the outside.”
Again the agent tapped on his keyboard. “We have the keys in the office so if you want to call by around 9:00 a.m. tomorrow you can sign the contract and move in … There is one thing … as it is such short notice we can only accept cash payment rather than cheque.”
I had no problem with this request, and, learning from my earlier blunder, I had no intention of paying by cheque or credit card and leaving any form of trail that could lead back to me. “Yes, I can give you cash.”
“Okay. I just need to take your name for the contract.”
Momentarily caught off guard, after a few seconds of frantic thought a single name came to mind. “James Bosworth. My name’s James Bosworth.”
I felt some relief as I made my way back home, leaving the dirty streets and derelict buildings behind and driving through the increasingly more affluent areas of the city. I arrived back home just after 3:00 p.m., and realising I hadn’t eaten since the previous night I made a cheese sandwich and soup before retaking my seat at the kitchen table, keen to get on with the next phase of the planning.
Next I turned my attention to the weapon. I’d seen numerous movies in which a gun had been the instrument of choice. I was sure there were dodgy pubs in the rough parts of town where I could purchase such an item, but with a career in academia rather than organised crime, I was limited for contacts in the underworld. In any case I didn’t know how to use a gun; it was all too risky. A knife on the hand was a different matter. Any fool could swing a knife – I was quite sure of that. I reached over for the bread knife that I’d used in making my sandwich. It had a long blade, maybe twenty-five centimetres in length and three centimetres deep. I gripped the wooden handle and took a practice swing as I imagined Musgrove standing in front of me. It didn’t feel right. The length of the blade was probably sufficient, but the knife wasn’t heavy enough. I sat back in the chair; I knew that I’d seen something more suitable but couldn’t quite remember where. After a few seconds it came to me, and I dashed out of the back door and to the garden shed, where I’d stored some of the boxes of my dad’s gardening stuff.
